Drabblecast cover art - Current outlines

Been SUPER busy lately. First parent / teacher evening of the year at work. That was a late night.

I've been working hard on the pinata as well - that's gotta be ready by Sunday !

I have been doing the Drabblecast cover art though - here's the current state of the outlines :


Now - sleep ! Hopefully the cat won't bring a live mouse into our room at 5am again ...

Drabblecast cover art !

On Friday I got a e-mail from the art director of The Drabblecast podcast. asking me if I would do some art for an upcoming episode. It was very exciting - and naturally I said yes. It's for one of their 'trifector' episodes - where they run three stories by different writers on a similar theme. Of the three stories I read, I got the most vivid imagery from one creepy little tale about 'yarn babies'.

I initially got this idea for the art :


Which wasn't too bad, but I'd gotten hung up on the stitched heart on the first of the yarn babies. When I thought about it some more - the image of the second one in the hands of her 'father' got me thinking. I decided this was the better way to go. I've started vectoring out some of the outlines already :



I've got till the 11th of April to get it finished. I'm excited to see where this one goes !

Pirate ship pinata - cannon hatches

I wanted to give Angelo's pirate ship pinata a little more detail - so I figured I'd give it some cannons. What's a pirate ship without cannons ?

I started by figuring out the dimensions of a cannon hatch housing I could fold from a single piece of cardboard. I came up with this :



The next step was to score the lines, and fold initially :



Then it was a matter of hot-gluing the housing tabs to make it stay together, adding in a cardboard tube for good measure.



Viola ! Then I just had to repeat that another three times, throw together a small cardboard hatch, and hot glue them to the ship body :



And there we have it !



It doesn't look half bad !

Dunesteef cover #4 - HIJ - Skull-face boy

A little more done. The figure on the right will eventually have his face painted like a skull.

At present I'm a little annoyed. A certain podcast went ahead and played a certain story about mice in space without the art I did for the story. I have had an apology from a certain podcast host - but to be honest, it doesn't do much right now. Mind you - it has been almost a year since I had the art finished, so I did have a sinking feeling something was up.

Dunesteef cover #4 - HIJ - Hobo hair !

Only a little bit of advancement tonight. Did one of the plaits for the Hobo ghost child - and a little bit of her hair.

Time to sit down, watch some tv, maybe sketch something with a pencil.

Dunesteef cover #4 - HIJ - Hobo outlines

I've been pretty busy this week with work, and when I'm not doing stuff with the kids at home I've been slaving away on Angelo's pinata ( which is up to the 3rd and final layer of paper mache ).

But - I did take some some to get some more of the initial outlines done on the HIJ cover art :


I've started to use a new and separate layer for everything now. The Hobo costumed child is made up of about eight individual layers ( eyes / nose / nose joins / hat brim / hat top / hat ribbon / neck and shoulders / face outline ). I'm finding this is really useful for making adjustments to the image. If I don't like one this - I can easily delete it or erase bits of it without doing any damage to the other bits. When it's all done to my liking, I simply merge all the layers into a single master outline layer.

I really shudder to think of my early photoshop stuff which was ALL on ONE layer. Sheesh.

Thing I'm making - Pirate ship pinata

I made a start tonight on the pirate ship pinata for Angelo's 4th birthday party. I found a web site about making one here :
http://detejas.com/?page_id=324
Which was very useful !

I got some photocopy paper boxes from work, cut them up and hot glued them together to form the paper mache frame :




It's looking alright so far. Tomorrow I'll get the first layer of paper mache on. Hopefully it won't get too soggy and collapse under its own weight !

Dunesteef cover #4 - HIJ - initial outlines

Only a little bit today. Another busy one. Gotta go do the dishes before I get some sleep. I'm happy to have made a start though.



I'm trying to do this with a gray background while I'm developing the outlines. It's supposed to be better than white. I can't remember why.

Dunesteef Cover #4 - Halloweeen in July - Initial sketch

Here's the starting sketch for the new art project, art for the Dunesteef 'Halloween in July' story.

Kinda rough at this point, I know, but it'll get better !

Birthday invitation - finished

And it's done.
Some more shading ( the sea, the monsters, the compass rode ), and the cool parchment texture I found online.
I think it's done now. Time to do the inner stuff, and get a few printed.
I hope Angelo likes it !

Birthday invitation - crop / scroll / some shading

Had an idea for a scroll saying 'You're invited!' at the top.
Got the scroll done after I made a batch of meatballs for tomorrows tea.
Have a couple of pirate styled fonts at the ready. I should hopefully get this done tomorrow.

Birthday invitation - more line detail

Got some more line detail done this evening. It's not too far off being done now.

New Project - Angelo's 4th birthday invitation

New drawing project - Angelo's 4th birthday is fast approaching, and he's going to have his first real birthday party. We're going to have a pirate theme - because pirates are cool, and Angelo seemed to be into pirates not long ago. He's back on the Buzz Lightyear train again now - but I'm sure he'll enjoy a pirate thing.

So I'm putting together a invitation thing for it. Here's the front cover.

Hoping to get it done in under a week. Then I have a pirate ship shaped pinata to make. Fun fun fun !